Recent graduate spotlight: Rigved Sardey

From a young age, Rigved Sardey, MS’23 had an inclination that he wanted to study science as he continued his education. Competing in a science olympiad as a middle school student in India sparked his interest, and as he excelled in chemistry in high school, he came to realize that studying materials science would align with his strengths.  

After completing his undergraduate degree and working as a materials engineer in an automotive company in India, Sardey became further interested in data science and analytics as they pertain to materials engineering. At the time, additive manufacturing research was flourishing, especially in regards to the study of porosity.  

The timing was right for him to pursue a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon, particularly as the university had recently undertaken a project through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) University Leadership Initiative led by MSE professor Anthony Rollett. As part of the Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program, Carnegie Mellon had been tapped to lead a research team dedicated to examining new ways to build and power aircraft of the future. 

During his time as student in the master’s program, Sardey had the opportunity to shift his focus from research to the workplace through completing an internship with Nucor.

A lot of what I know about machine learning is a result of the courses I took at CMU

Rigved Sardey, MSE MS Graduate

“The impact that I could have made directly at Nucor was very attractive to me at the time,” he said “I was able to see results of my work immediately and make big contributions to advance the organization, as opposed to a more research focused internship where it may take years to see outcomes.” 

This experience coupled with the opportunity to revolutionize the production of steel using analytics and machine learning drew Sardey to pursue a full-time role with Nucor after completing his Master’s degree. He recently started a newly created role of Digital Solutions Engineer at the company.  In this role, he will help Nucor to explore how new technologies could improve the safety, productivity and quality of the steelmaking industry.

“I think we are at a crucial point in the industry where these technologies are starting to come into play and industry leaders are seeing the kind of potential that they can have on the business,” noted Sardey 

Sardey says that working on the Quality Made project alongside Dr. Rollett allowed him to hone skills that would serve him in his career, as he learned to manage multiple projects simultaneously. Additionally, the coursework he pursued has set him on a path to succeed in his new role.  

“A lot of what I know about machine learning is a result of the courses I took at CMU,” he said.